1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a kitchen knife with a sharpener and, more particularly, to a kitchen knife with a sharpener, which is configured to allow a user to quickly take the sharpener from out of the knife when a cutting edge of the knife becomes dull and requires to be whetted.
2. Description of the Related Art
Kitchen knives are generally used in the home and restaurants. The kinds of kitchen knives and the materials from which they are made have undergone various developments no that the kitchen knives are helpful to living and work. Further, a variety of whetstones have been made available to appropriately whet the cutting edges of a variety of kitchen knives having different blade materials so that it is not good to whet the various kitchen knives using one whetstone.
In other words, kitchen knives that are made of steel or stainless steel have relatively low hardness and the sharp cutting edges of the steel or stainless steel kitchen knives easily and quickly become dull as the knives are used with the passage of time, so that it is necessary to frequently whet the cutting edges using natural whetstones or artificial whetstones so as to recover the desired sharpness. Further, when the cutting edge of a kitchen knife is made of a super hard material, the cutting edges can maintain the desired sharpness for a lengthy period of time and so the cutting edge of the kitchen knife may be made of a super hard material, such as ceramic, titanium or titanium alloy. However, when the cutting edge of a kitchen knife that is made of a super hard material loses its edge and becomes dull, general natural whetstones or general artificial whetstones cannot be used to recover the sharpness of the cutting edge so that one must whet the cutting edge made of a super hard material using a special whetstone and users of such a kitchen knife should entrust manufacturers or whetting experts with the Whetting work. Further, a special whetstone may be attached to a kitchen knife when a user purchases the kitchen knife. However, the attached special whetstone may easily be lost or the place where the whetstone is located may not be easy to discover because the whetstone is not frequently used.
For example, the inventor of this invention already proposed a folding cutter, which is configured in such a way that a blade 1 can be received in a handle 3 by folding the blade 1. In this folding cutter, a whetstone plate 4 that is supported by an elastic member 5 is placed in the handle 3 at an angle at a location through which a cutting edge 1a of the blade 1 passes when the blade 1 is received into the handle 3. Therefore, when the blade 1 is received into the handle 3, the cutting edge 1a comes into sliding contact with the inclined whetstone plate 4 so that the cutting edge 1a can be whetted easily and semiautomatically by the whetstone plate 4 (see patent document 1). Further, a technique, which uses a whetstone plate angle changing device 6 that can change the contact angle between the whetstone plate 4 and the cutting edge 1a or can bring both the whetstone plate 4 and the cutting edge 1a into a noncontact state, was proposed is patent document 1. Further, another technique, which has a handle 3 that is provided with a cutout pocket 3a, a pocket sleeve 4 that is embedded in the cutout pocket 3a, and a sharpener body 5 that is removably received in the pocket sleeve 4 and includes a diamond sharpener 5a and finger grips 5c provided on the diamond sharpener 5a, was proposed (see patent document 2). In the technique disclosed in patent document 2, the pocket sleeve 4 is embedded in the cutout pocket 3a and the sharpener body 5 is removably received in the pocket sleeve 4 in such a way that the finger grips 5c are exposed outside opposite side surfaces of the handle 3. Here, the knife blade is made of super hard ceramic or tungsten carbide having an HIV value of 1000 or higher. A further technique was proposed (see patent document 3) in which a sleeve is embedded in a cutter body and both a polishing material and a whetstone are attached to an end of the sleeve so that, when a cutter blade is ejected from or retracted into the cutter body, a cutting edge of the blade can be whetted both by the polishing material and by the whetstone, thereby maintaining the knife in a sharp state. This patent document 3 also discloses forming a slit in a conventional dull piece removing part that is provided in the rear end of the cutter body so that a dull piece from the blade can be removed by bending the dull piece and both a polishing material and a whetstone are attached in the slit. Therefore, it is possible to further whet the cutting edge using both the polishing material and the whetstone, thereby increasing the expected lifespan of the cutting edge and increasing the economical value of the cutter. Yet another technique, which provides an edged tool X having a blade 1, a handle 2 that holds the blade 1 and a whetstone 3 that is removably received in the handle 2, was proposed (see patent document 4). In the technique disclosed in patent document 4, at least one of opposite side surfaces 21a and 21b of the handle 2 that are opposed to each other relative to a transverse directional axis L of the blade 1 is totally or partially inclined relative to the transverse directional axis L of the blade 1, thus forming an inclined surface, so that, when a cutting edge 13 of the blade 1 must be whetted using the whetstone 3, the handle 2 is placed on a support table 5 in such a way that the inclined side surface of the handle 2 comes into contact with an upper surface 51 of the support table 5. Therefore, the blade 1 can be naturally placed at an angle on the support table so that the blade 1 is tilted upwards in a direction from the back of a blade 14 to the cutting edge 15.